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Notable names in the colossal leak of offshore financial records include, from left, banking family scion Élie de Rothschild, Imee Marcos of the Philippine political dynasty and millionaire former playboy Gunther Sachs, who married Brigitte Bardot. (CP/Reuters/Getty)

A glimpse at an enormous trove of leaked records about secret companies and accounts is being opened to the public in hope it will shed light on the murky world of offshore finance.

The information, contained in a new online database released Friday night, has the names of more than 100,000 offshore entities — mainly companies and trusts set up in locales such as the British Virgin Islands and Cook Islands — and the people associated with them.

CBC News has had exclusive Canadian access to the data for months and has determined that it names at least 550 Canadians. Media outlets worldwide have been reporting on the information leak since it came to light in early April, with far-reaching global repercussions.

The online names database was released late Friday night by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, and contains a basic subset of the 260 gigabytes of leaked tax-haven files that the Washington-based group obtained and shared with global news organizations, including the CBC.

The web-based database of names from the leaked tax-haven records maps out links between people and secret offshore entities. (ICIJ)“What we’re doing for the British Virgin Islands, the Cook Islands, and other offshore havens is what’s routinely done in many countries around the world — making the control and ownership of companies a matter of public record,” said Michael Hudson, a senior editor at the journalism consortium.

“This is about transparency and accountability. There is a growing consensus that no one should be able to own a company secretly. No one should be able to hide in the shadows behind a company or trusts.”

The newly released database shows the names and, where available, the shareholders and directors of offshore companies, and visually maps out links between them.

For example, a search of “Ghermezian” finds the name of Alberta businessman David Ghermezian, president of the West Edmonton Mall, and links him to a British Virgin Islands-registered company called Regal Mega Malls Development Corp . and a group of Chinese, Taiwanese and Canadian entrepreneurs.

Ghermezian has told CBC News his offshore company was a legal joint venture to develop a mega-shopping centre in China, but the project fizzled.

The names database does not contain the much vaster cache of potentially confidential information from the offshore data leak, such as bank account numbers, passport data, telephone numbers, financial transactions and emails.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists said it hopes people will browse the names and tip off reporters to new revelations about people and companies doing business offshore.

“ICIJ believes many of the best stories may come from crowd-sourcing, when readers explore the database,” the organization said in a press release.

Offshore companies not necessarily illegal

Under Canadian law, it is not illegal to create an offshore company or trust as long as it is properly declared for tax purposes. There are a variety of reasons for setting one up, though all offshore entities typically enjoy strict secrecy under the laws of the jurisdictions in which they’re based.

“We’re not saying that everyone in the database has done something wrong,” Hudson said. “If you haven’t done anything wrong, however, you shouldn’t have anything to fear from this disclosure.”

CBC News has reported that the leaked files show that a Canadian senator and her husband, one of the country’s most prominent class-action lawyers, were beneficiaries of a confidential offshore trust in the Cook Islands that was used to make investments via Bermuda.

High-profile figures, from Crocodile Dundee star Paul Hogan to an officially bankrupt Swedish real-estate mogul to European banking dynast Élie de Rothschild, have used offshore accounts to hide wealth.

However, the leaked data also discloses dozens of cases of crooks, money-launderers and even democratically elected officials using the secrecy afforded by tax havens.

As CBC News reported recently, for example, the data shows how Russian criminals used offshore companies set up and administered by a Canadian firm in the Caribbean to launder part of a $230-million heist of the Russian treasury.

Other media outlets have found that the current or past leaders of countries such as Azerbaijan, Thailand, South Korea, the Philippines, Paraguay, Indonesia, Malaysia and Colombia have ties to offshore companies, sometimes in cases that would present serious conflicts of interest.

“A lot of people will be panicked to wonder if their names are on that sort of list and what it’s going to mean for them,” said Raymond Baker, president of Global Financial Integrity, a U.S. non-profit that campaigns to stop illicit movements of money.

“Right now there are millions and millions of entities around the world, shell companies where we don’t know who owns those entities. This is ridiculous. If we want to curtail the flow of illicit money, step one is knowing who owns the businesses that we are dealing with,” he said.

Tax probes underway

While journalists have their hands on the full set of leaked offshore records, so do national tax agencies. Britain, Australia and the United States announced last month that they’ve launched what could be the biggest ever international investigation into tax cheats using the data. Britain said it obtained the leaked files in late 2010.

Canada was offered the data by confidential sources for a price sometime before last December, but rejected it due to the Canada Revenue Agency’s policy at the time of not paying for such information. The federal government overturned that policy in its recent budget, which ushered in a plan to pay tipsters up to 15 per cent where the CRA recovers more than $100,000 from someone using offshore accounts to dodge their tax obligations.

Hudson said the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists is hoping people will use its new database to find leads on other potential abuse of tax havens.

“It’s not a panacea. It’s not going to tell you everything. But it’s a tool,” he said.

“It’s a starting place for research for average citizens, for journalists, for government officials to start seeing connections and start documenting who’s out there and who’s using offshore.”

If you have more information on this story, or other investigative tips to pass on, please emailinvestigations@cbc.ca.

This will be a long ongoing story. Reporters have a couple of million document to sift through. This is just a tiny sample of what has been found so far.

Added an update for April 5th at the bottom.

April 4 2013

They sought the utmost secrecy in offshore tax havens. But now some of the world’s wealthiest citizens are having their undisclosed financial records laid bare.

An unprecedented leak of documents is revealing the closely guarded investment information of more than 100,000 people around the world, including hundreds of Canadians.

In what is believed to be one of the largest ever leaks of financial data, the Washington, D.C.-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has received nearly 30 years of data entries, emails and other confidential details from 10 offshore havens around the world.

CBC News has partnered with the ICIJ over the last seven months to gain exclusive Canadian access to the information. Thirty-seven media outlets in 35 other countries are also involved.

“This secret world has finally been revealed,” said lawyer and international tax expert Art Cockfield, a professor at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont.

“I find it absolutely fascinating to get a look at this data dump. I think this is the very first time where people like myself, and maybe even government officials, have had access to this information.”

The files contain information on over 120,000 offshore entities — including shell corporations and legal structures known as trusts — involving people in over 170 countries. The leak amounts to 260 gigabytes of data, or 162 times larger than the U.S. State Department cables published by WikiLeaks in 2010.

“What we found as we started digging in the records is a pretty extensive collection of dodgy characters: Wall Street fraudsters, Ponzi schemers, figures connected to organized crime, to arms dealing, money launderers,” said Michael Hudson, a senior editor at the ICIJ, who worked with a team for months to sort through the information.

“We just found a lot of folks involved in questionable or outright illegal activities.”

There was also plenty of information related to legal offshore dealings. Offshore investments aren’t illicit as long as they are not used to evade taxes or launder money.

As reported by CBC News yesterday, the files show that a Canadian senator and her husband, one of the country’s most prominent class-action lawyers, were beneficiaries of a confidential offshore account in the Cook Islands that was used to make investments via Bermuda.

Elite Russian scammers who stole $230 million from the country’s treasury in a deadly heist that sparked a diplomatic row with the U.S.

The fraudster hit with the second-biggest fine in history from Ontario’s stock-market regulator.

Top German, French and Swiss banks that set up thousands of secretive companies in offshore havens for such clients as Thai and Pakistani politicians.

In many cases, the leaked documents expose insider details of how agents would incorporate companies in Caribbean and South Pacific micro-states on behalf of wealthy clients, then assign front people called “nominees” to serve, on paper, as directors and shareholders for the corporations — disguising the companies’ true owners.

Often the companies were set up through intermediary law and accounting firms, as well, adding a further layer of anonymity for investors.

“These people have no idea whatsoever about the activities of the companies that they are apparently responsible for. Now, this is a complete travesty,” said John Christensen, director of the Tax Justice Network, an international coalition that campaigns against offshore finance.

“But it is actually crucial to this process of not revealing who the real person is behind the company.”

Sometimes these methods were used by figures with known links to organized crime, arms dealers and ex-mercenaries. In other instances, documents reveal tax dodgers funnelling money offshore, beyond the eyes and arms of their nation’s treasury.

Canadians at top

Many of the leaked records consist of emails between employees and customers of specialty firms that set up and administer tens of thousands of offshore companies.

One of those firms — Commonwealth Trust Ltd., based in the British Virgin Islands in the Caribbean — was founded and, until 2009, run by a Toronto native, Tom Ward. The company’s senior ranks included a number of other Canadians. It mainly sets up corporations in the BVI for the wealthy, charging around $2,000 a year per account for its services.

Another agency, Portcullis TrustNet, has offices on tropical islands around the globe, including in the Cook Islands near New Zealand, as well as the BVI, the Caymans, Mauritius, Samoa, Singapore and Hong Kong. A former senior manager at the company is a Canadian lawyer.

Not all the firms’ leaked emails are strictly business. There’s also hundreds of intra-office missives about cricket, after-work drinking plans and the latest internet memes.

“I am getting some very funny looks as I sit here crying with laughter at that one,” a TrustNet employee messages a co-worker after watching a YouTube video that was sent around.

Another colleague describes a recent Monday evening trip to the bar in an email to her mom: “What started out as being just one drink ended up being 3 double bourbons and hello?! Can I just get drunk?! Haha.”

Up to $32 trillion stashed offshore

Offshore tax havens have existed for at least 100 years. While there’s no firm definition, the International Monetary Fund says most of what it officially calls “offshore financial centres” are distinguished by:

A banking sector that primarily serves non-residents.

Low to no taxation on foreign firms and people.

Tight financial secrecy.

By those terms, there are up to 80 tax havens in the world, including such countries as Panama, Liechtenstein and Switzerland but also tiny island territories like Jersey, Malaysia’s Labuan, the Isle of Man and the Turks and Caicos.

Publishing decision

Worldwide, the Tax Justice Network estimates that between $21 trillion and $32 trillion of private wealth is held offshore, out of reach of national treasuries (a more conservative estimate by the Boston Consulting Group puts the figure at $8 trillion). The international organization says that translates to up to $280 billion a year in lost taxes — twice what the world’s richest countries spend combined on foreign aid.

Canada’s share of that, assuming it’s the same as the country’s proportion of global GDP, would be about $7 billion, or a quarter of the federal government’s projected 2012 budget deficit.

Countries have discussed ways to stem the tax drain to offshore havens for years, but so far have been unable, or unwilling, to fully plug the leak.

In last month’s federal budget, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty promised to set up a system for tipsters to report offshore tax cheats. Informants would get 15 per cent of the recouped tax in cases where the Canada Revenue Agency recovers more than $100,000. The government estimates it could recover hundreds of million in revenue. But the Tories also cut $47 million a year from the budget of the Canada Revenue Agency. Source

This is a fun little Interactive toy to play with. It also has the names of many of the countries used as tax havens.

Do try it out and get educated on how the rich hide their money to avoid paying taxes like the rest of us.

Jérôme Cahuzac plunges Hollande’s government into crisis after shock confession to hiding €600,000 for more than 20 years Source

PM of Georgia among owners of secret firms in British Virgin Islands among owners of secret firms in British Virgin Islands

His Offshore company: Bosherston Overseas Corp

Details: Ivanishvili, a billionaire businessman, became prime minister of Georgia in 2012. Listed from 2006-9 as director of the BVI company, administered via an agent in Panama, incorporated in 2006 and still active.

AzerbaijanPresident Ilham Aliyev and family

Three BVI entities set up in 2008 in the names of the president’s daughters, Arzu and Leyla,. They list as a director wealthy local businessman, Hassan Gozal. His construction company has won major contracts in Azerbaijan. Another BVI entity set up in 2003, lists the president and his wife Mehriban as owners. More HERE

The extraordinary range of people using offshore hideaways

Records represent the biggest stockpile of inside information about the offshore system ever obtained by a media organisation More HERE

Apparently there has been about $32 Trillion stashed in off shore sites. Then used to launder money, tax evasion or other things by many. Not all are bad people but many are.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists

For the past 15 months, journalists from over 40 countries have worked together to shed light on financial secrecy jurisdictions. For much more information go HERE

April 5 2013 update

It’s a tale with the cloak-and-dagger intrigue of a Hollywood thriller: a $230-million heist, corrupt Russian police and government officials, prison beatings, a dead lawyer, Kafkaesque trials and a diplomatic spat between international superpowers.

And now, for the first time, secret files obtained exclusively in Canada by CBC News reveal how a Canadian-run offshore company in the Caribbean enabled the transfer of some of that money into a labyrinth of shell corporations around the world in a scandal known as the Magnitsky affair. For more go HERE

Related

Many hid their money in Cyprus. Some must have had some inside information as apparently there has been about 175 billion Euro sent to other off shore banking havens in the Month of March. Obviously some one told them. Some reports claim the IMF warned a few of the wealthy people. Either way some how they knew enough to get their money out of the EU countries.

Many of the Rich hide their money in off shore countries and the poor foot the bill for taxes etc.

Personally the only place anyone from any country should be allowed to keep all their money is in the country, where they reside and no where else. There should not nor ever have been secret places to hide your money as a tax dodger.